Whether you are a business owner, CEO or manager, and regardless of your product or service, you are in the people development business. Acquiring and keeping good people is one of your most important jobs. The more your team members grow and develop their talents and abilities, the more they will be able to accomplish. See your team members as they can become and encourage them to become what you see.

People tend to become what the most important people in their lives think they will become; and you are one of the most important people in the lives of your team members.

In the book, "First, Break All the Rules," authored by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, we note "no news is good news" as a destructive philosophy when it comes to bringing out the best in people. Average managers will spend equal time with everyone or, worse yet, spend most of their time with problem people they call "high maintenance." Great managers spend more time with their top producers.

Talent is a multiplier. The more attention and energy you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best performers is your most productive time. "No news" is never good news. "No news" kills the very behaviors you want to multiply.

At its simplest, a manager's job is to encourage people to do more of certain productive behaviors and less of other unproductive behaviors. Managers' reactions can significantly affect which behaviors are multiplied and which gradually die out. As a manager, you are on stage every day; you are sending signals that every employee hears and sees.

So, how can we help team members grow and bring out the best in them?

The following are suggestions provided by Ken Irvin, President, STAR Leadership Associates, a leading organizational development company located in Las Vegas:

Encourage personal growth: give employees opportunities to try new things and acquire new skills. Growth is motivating. Stagnation is boring and will drain a person's energy. Provide opportunities for learning. Send team members to seminars and other training opportunities.

Be a good role model: When you are a student of continuous learning and personal growth, it will be easier to encourage your team members to embrace personal development and growth.

Encourage personal goal setting: When team members accomplish personal goals, they have more confidence in themselves, their self-esteem expands, and they become more valuable employees. The personal goal doesn't need to have anything to do with work. When someone quits smoking, loses weight, starts a workout program, improves their golf game, spends more quality time with loved ones, or any other goal that is important to them, they will feel better about themselves and that will show up in their work.

Help team members identify their strengths: their talents and abilities -- and help them spend more time using these strengths, talents, and abilities. Developing strengths is more motivational, takes less effort, and gives a greater return on investment than trying to fix weaknesses. If team members have been toiling in areas where they are weak, and you reassign them to work in areas where they can use their strengths, you'll see a dramatic increase in natural motivation.

Look for opportunities to build up team members: Give them credit for their suggestions, seek their opinions; recognize or point out their progress or improvement.

Set goals for growth: Make a list of your team members and identify what each of them can do to grow to the next level. Discuss what you have written with each team member, get their buy-in that they would like to accomplish the goal, and help them develop a written plan of action to achieve the goal. If, when you make your list, you discover some personal development goals common among team members, consider some group training that will address the goal area.

Resist any temptation to use abusive tactics such as sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling or public embarrassment. People will remember how you made them feel -- good and bad -- long after they forget the words. Seeing team members as they can become will help you view them in a positive light, choose the right words and actions and encourage personal and professional growth.

As a team leader, you must make the time and take the actions to support your people's development. Perhaps this will serve as a catalyst to get started or as a motivator if you are on the right track: "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." Henry Ford not only said that -- he also lived it.

Lucy A. Ivins develops and guides employees and organizations toward a higher level of performance and success. She writes from her resident office in Pahrump.